instrumtation - string quartet

click below to see score

program note

Beautiful places and spaces are inherently mysterious. It is this sense of mystery that imbues these places with a deep calm, especially when alone. The music in Loneliness in a Beautiful Place creates a landscape of questions with voices that hold their notes (especially trills) for a very long time, before discovering some sort of melodic answer. A chorale hints at something deeper. Near the end the music embraces the landscape, literally scaling up a mountain of notes, before returning to meditation. It is my intention here not to depict the landscape in music, but rather the sense of exploring it.